Geophysical Surveys Near Tucson Electric Power Sundt Generating Station

Abstract

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is carrying out subsurface investigations in order to locate more groundwater for cooling at the Sundt power-generating plant. To assist with this investigation, the University of Arizona GEN/GEOS 416/516 Field Studies in Geophysics class conducted geophysics surveys in an area just south of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and between UTM coordinates 508,555 to 511,753 East and 3,553,705 to 3,556,895 North. Four geophysics methods (Gravity, Magnetics, Transient Electromagnetics (TEM), and Passive Seismic) were employed to locate a postulated fault, which may be correlated with ground water flow. A broad regional magnetic anomaly was mapped, as the magnetic field decreases steadily from NE to SW. There are no significant magnetic field anomalies that could be related to a potential fault. The Gravity results show a regional gravitational gradient, steadily decreasing from NE to SW, with a large isolated anomaly apparent around 1500m from the base station at the NE corner of the survey area. But, this large anomaly is a localized, and does not appear on the adjacent parallel survey lines, therefore it is not related to a potential fault contact. The Passive Seismic survey detected a deep boundary at 100m to 160m in elevation, but the depths interpreted from the 11 stations are scattered and do not show a clear trend. The Transient Electromagnetic (TEM) data show a consistent difference in depth to a low-resistivity layer along the profile line. The four TEM stations north of Interstate 10 (I10) have an average elevation for the 10 Ohm-m contour line of 720 meters. The four TEM stations south of I10 have an average elevation for the 10 Ohm-m contour line of 670 meters. This offset may be related to the postulated fault.